Read Online The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet by Bernie Su, Kate Rorick - Free Book Online

in the kitchen. Sometimes the cooking itself isn’t enough to de-stress her.
    But Bing didn’t seem to notice anything untoward, launching into a polite conversation about the wine with my father, how they had picked it up at a local winery, and venturing that
perhaps he and Jane could go there sometime, make a day of it.
    From there, we repaired to the dining room (we only have the real one, thank goodness), where Mom served everyone an . . . international array of cuisine. The evening was still going okay at
this point, which was when Lydia decided to make herself known.
    I can only guess that she was pretty bored and no one was paying much attention to her.
    “So, um, Bing,” she started, scooting her chair closer to his. As I was Mom’s assistant in the kitchen, I had to be near the kitchen door, and thus was not able to position
myself to block Bing’s non-Jane side from familial intrusion. “You’re, like, a med student, right?”
    “Yes,” Bing smiled, a little cautious. After all, he’d been thoroughly questioned already about his medical studies at UCLA, his choice of specialty, and the weird growth on my
dad’s big toe.
    “Do you, like, examine people yet?”
    “Not yet—I still have another year to go before we see patients on our own.”
    “Then, how do you, like, practice? Do you—oh, my God—play Doctor with your fellow med students? You’d have to, like, look at their privates and stuff. That would be so
crazy. You’d have to see them
naked
.” Lydia’s eyes went wide. “And I just got the
best
idea of how to pick up guys.” She turned back to Bing.
“Do you have a stethoscope? Can I borrow it?”
    “Actually—”
    “OMG, can you imagine the number of guys I can get to take their shirt off, just by saying I need to listen to their heartbeat? Good way to find out if they are too hairy to take home
first, am I right? Caroline, you
must
have tried it before. No? Bing, please can I borrow your stethoscope? Please?
Pleaaase?
”
    “Lydia,” I warned, kicking her under the table.
    “What?” Lydia answered with a responding kick. “What did I say?”
    That’s Lydia for you. She has no idea when she’s gone too far for fancy-dinner conversation. Or for regular conversation. Even my mother, who usually indulges Lydia’s
enthusiasms (after all, boy-crazy is only one step removed from marriage-crazy), had turned a mottled shade of pink.
    Swiftly, I tried to adjust Lydia’s line of questioning to something more palatable. “So, Bing, when do you head back to school?”
    “Oh. Um . . .”
    “My grad program is on a trimester schedule,” I continued. “When we get off in June, I actually don’t have to go back until October.”
    “And sometime in the middle of September, Lizzie will start to go stir-crazy without lectures to attend and papers to write,” Jane finished for me, giving me a smile from across the
table.
    “Usually, it’s August,” I replied.
    “Well, I have some time,” Bing answered. When Caroline cleared her throat, he continued. “Until I have to go back to school, that is. And I’m lucky that my sister could
take time from her own work to help get me settled.”
    Caroline smiled graciously at him. “And decorate! Which is really why I came—Bing’s idea of furnishing is an armchair and TV. Besides, who wouldn’t like to paint on a
blank canvas?” she said to Jane, who giggled.
    “And does Darcy like to decorate, too?” I asked. I couldn’t help it.
    “No, decorating’s not really his thing.” Bing laughed. “He’s just hanging out with me. He doesn’t love telecommuting, but he can still pop up to San Francisco
when he needs to.”
    Yeah, I highly doubt that. More likely, he inherited his business, and it’s run by people who actually know what they’re doing so he can take weeks off at a time to “just
hang” with his buddies.
    “But whatever are you going to do about that gorgeous house of yours?” Mom interjected. She